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Pietro Grimaldi, an elderly retired insurance salesman, is found dead and stabbed in a taxi cab after he arrives at his final destination. The driver only noticed that Grimaldi was helped into the cab when he was picked up near a bank. When the medical examiner investigates, she finds that before Grimaldi was stabbed, he was also shot.

The detectives learn more about Grimaldi, and find out that he sold life insurance to European Jews during World War II. After the war, he refused to honor the policies of holocaust victims, claiming that there was no documentation for the claims. He then emigrated from Italy to the United States, where he worked for the American parent company (All-Atlantic Insurance) of his Italian firm.

Grimaldi had kept a handwritten log of all the policies he sold, in a safe deposit box at the bank, and took it with him when he was subpoenaed to testify about the scheme. Years before, he had shown his son Jordan the book, telling him that it was worth a large amount of money.

The prosecutors determine two different crimes occurred: when Grimaldi left the bank, he was shot by his son to stop him from selling the book, then afterwards he was stabbed by a man hired indirectly by All-Atlantic to steal the book.

The prosecutors charge the stabber and his accomplice with manslaughter, the son with murder, and Hamilton Stewart - the chief executive of All-Atlantic - with over one thousand counts of grand larceny, one count for each of the accounts purported to be in the book. The policies would, in total, be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

At first, the prosecutors have a difficult time making a case, but one of Stewart's assistants fills in details of the case after feeling remorse during earlier testimony as he witnessed the son destroy himself on the stand over what his father did and he has children himself so he doesn't want the same thing to happen to them. When its suggested that he consult an attorney, the man refuses as he is one and knows what he's doing. This assistant tells the prosecutors that Stewart was the one who created the plan to steal the book, which was in his possession right now. In return for the book, Stewart agrees to plead guilty with a prison sentence of four to twelve years and a written waiver of extradition to Italy.